For the Home Front II

Coastal road on Sunday. The roads had turned into rivers.

Okay, some tourism this week. Sunday we had this massive rain storm. We went to Jeita Cave , thinking the place was probably closed due to the flooding, since there’s a river running through it. Well, no such thing; the highway and all other roads were flooded all right, but not the cave.


Under the rampart of the Crusader castle. In 1104, Jbail (Byblos) was conquered by the Crusaders, who used the large Roman stones and columns to construct the castle .


You probably are expecting some nice pictures  of the cave. Well, no. They do not allow you to make pictures in the cave. Never mind, plenty of other picture material, because we went to Byblos afterwards.

Byblos Port in the rain

Byblos is of course where there is a pretty intact crusader castle, a Roman nympheum, a Roman miniature amphi theater, a Roman colonnaded street (these Romans did not sit on their a**), a Phoenician grave yard, an Arabic souk, a medieval church, an old port, and hundreds of Roman pillars lying all over the place, and all of that in about 1 square kilometer. 

A tiny Roman theatre (rained in). (218 A.D.)

Mind you, half the place hasn’t even been properly excavated yet. I don’t know much about the some 7,000 year old history of Byblos, other than what you find on the Internet. Here’s a pretty good brochure on it from the Ministry of Tourism. It’s a 25 page brochure, but after reading this you probably could work as a tourist guide in the place. 

St. John the Baptist church,  started during the crusades in 1150. We didn't notice the coffin until later. Sorry about that.

The cousin was quite surprised that we were allowed to climb all over the ruins, Roman pillars and all. While there, we got caught in another massive rain storm, right while we were out and about in the field. When it rains here, it rains!

Wet wet wet

Running for cover into the castle

With a flimsy umbrella, lots of wind and even more water, we ended up getting totally soaked.